Leveraging the Collective Intelligence and Effort of Digital Crowds

October 31, 2015

Read The Full Prompt

In this module we have examined how firms can leverage digital technologies to harness the power of collective intelligence from the crowds to tackle a range of problems such as innovation problems and funding startups. For this assignment you have three options:

1 – Pick one industry where no firms have leveraged crowds, and come up with a crowd-based business model that may potentially transform the industry. Describe how you plan to create and capture value. Explain why the crowd will participate, and why your crowd-based model is better than the current model employed by the incumbents.

2 – Describe a company that is using crowds (external or internal) in an innovative manner. Describe how they incentivize participation and manage the crowd. What are the challenges? Describe how value creation and value capture occur, and the growth potential of this business.

3 – Companies often struggle with crowds as well. Describe failed crowdsourcing efforts and explain how and why the company failed. Given what you have learned in the course, what would you do differently?

Create an approximately 500-750 word post to make your contribution. Please create appropriate tags for your post. Please also respond to and comment on three other posts per module. Feel free to use graphics, data, videos and links to other sites to corroborate your points.

Please prepare a two minute pitch about your blog entry before the class.

Submitted (136)

Foldit – Solving Puzzles for Science
Tikola Nesla
Posted on October 27, 2015 at 9:31 pm
Foldit’s innovative approach solves the age old issue that science needs more people. Foldit has gamified protein folding so that anyone, not just scientists, can cure diseases.
Audiodraft: Crowdsourcing music skips a beat
uilc
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 6:05 pm
Audiodraft is a crowdsourcing platform where anyone can pay for custom music through contests or commission.  The target customer turned out to be advertising agencies who would run contests so that various unknown or known artists could bid on projects [...]
CrowdMed – using crowds for clinical diagnostics
HF
Last modified on November 3, 2015 at 3:00 pm
CrowdMed uses the knowledge of thousands of "experts" to solve difficult medical cases
Our community gives a Hoot
Becky D
Last modified on November 3, 2015 at 3:00 pm
Hootsuite leverages its loyal online community to crowdsource customer support, in turn reducing internal support costs.
Quora: Crowdsourced Answers
Anndrea Moore
Posted on December 8, 2015 at 8:03 am
“a place to get answers, to share what you know, to read, and to think” Quora is a website that allows users to anonymously post questions on a variety of topics and receive answers from anyone. The best answers are [...]
Crowdstorming the Hyperloop: JumpStartFund, HTT, and SpaceX
(Wo)Man in the Arena
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 8:32 pm
By reaching to the crowd- for crowdstorming in early stages, crowdsourcing in middle stages, and crowdfunding in all stages- HTT, SpaceX, and friends can bring a seemingly unreachable technology to the masses.
Everyone on the Internet is an Expert
brandon
Posted on November 2, 2015 at 12:11 am
As I pen this likely masterpiece, I contemplate two things: (a) why in Heaven’s name was a blog post due on a Saturday night*, and (b) how well is humankind doing in its quest to semantically structure the world’s information? [...]
DLife: Facilitated Network for Diabetes Patients
Mike Maley
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 3:56 pm
DLife is a social network of sorts connecting diabetes patients with one another to share knowledge and information about managing the disease - but does sharing medical advice go too far?
Crowdsource Employee Ideas with Kindling
Madrid
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 7:50 pm
Kindling is designed to engage the members of the organization in idea generation and increased collaboration.
Kraft’s Vegemite: the 2.0 time’s the charm?
Kathryn R
Last modified on October 26, 2015 at 11:54 am
It's easy to blame the crowd when crowdsourcing fails but most of the time the underlying reason for failure is in the design of the project. Kraft's Vegemite fiasco highlights the importance of thoughtful execution, especially when crowdsourcing the name [...]
Crowdsourcing sales forecasts: How Henkel leverages the collective wisdom of its employees
hawkeye
Last modified on October 28, 2015 at 5:30 pm
After traditional methods yielded unsatisfactory results, Henkel – which owns some of the most valuable European CPG brands – decided to leverage the collective wisdom of its employees to increase forecasting accuracy by using an internal prediction market.
ArcBazar: A marketplace for crowdsourcing architecture and design
Mati G
Last modified on October 31, 2015 at 10:10 am
ArcBazar is an online crowdsourcing platform focused on design and architecture projects, enabling people to easily find designers for their projects and at the same time, doing so in a very affordable way. On the other side, compete and collaborate [...]
OurCrowd: Changing the way startups are funded
#mustshop
Last modified on November 1, 2015 at 9:02 pm
Investment crowdsourcing platform that lets a closed network of investors pick and choose which startups (sourced by an experienced VC team) to invest in, at a minimum of $10k.
goFlow: Crowdsourcing surf reports
JI
Posted on October 26, 2015 at 4:32 pm
Surfing is considered by some as the ultimate extreme sport. Over 35 million people around the globe struggle to predict the tricky weather conditions to score the ride of their lives. This process is full of uncertainty and frustration as [...]
ShopShareCrop: How to support a closed food loop economy
Bougainvillea
Last modified on October 30, 2015 at 7:45 pm
ShopShareCrop presents a crowdsourcing solutions for grabbing those last-minute grocery items - without the excess fees of Instacart.
Lending Club shakes up the loan market
SC
Posted on November 2, 2015 at 7:21 am
Lending club's business model is challenging the way we think about loans by leveraging their crowdfunding community to fund loans.
Hearken helps newsrooms fuel public-powered journalism
moniguzman
Last modified on October 27, 2015 at 4:50 pm
Proven successful in a handful of public media outlets, Hearken's public-powered platform brings communities into news.
Summit Powder Mountain
Dani Johnson
Posted on November 1, 2015 at 9:44 pm
Summit Series has crowdfunded and crowdsourced a new resort and town plan for Powder Mountain in Eden Utah. The Question is to what end?
ExcelinEd: Crowdsourcing in Education
Jennifer B.
Posted on October 31, 2015 at 3:45 pm
The US public education system has a lot of room for improvement. One education organization is utilizing crowdsourcing to make a change, and bring creative ideas to the system.
Using the wisdom of the crowd to diagnose medical mysteries
Marissa Henry
Last modified on November 3, 2015 at 3:00 pm
CrowdMed aims to help those who suspect they have a rare disease, perhaps were misdiagnosed, or simply want a second opinion provide the story of their health problem to a community of experts.
Crowdfunding by Betabrand or how an $88 “Poo Emoji Button-Up Shirt” raised 1298% of its funding goal
mtv0302
Last modified on November 2, 2015 at 3:07 pm
Betabrand is successfully harnessing the power of the crowd to get and vet apparel ideas. But will its engaged, niche crowdbase stand in the way of further growth?
The Sharing Economy Applied to Insurance: Friends With Benefits
LMT
Last modified on November 2, 2015 at 8:12 pm
Today insurance customers are harnessing technology to form communities designed to share risks and reduce their insurance costs.
Intrade: Crowdsourced Wisdom?
Austin
Posted on November 1, 2015 at 11:03 pm
Intrade leveraged the wisdom of crowds by allowing users to bet on future world events and displaying shockingly accurate predictive power in the process.
giffgaff – the mobile network run by you
KP
Posted on October 30, 2015 at 2:49 pm
giffgaff's model is so customer centric, the customers do most of the work. So far this seems to be working, but is it enough? Can the company withstand change that is not predicted by its customers? Is it just a [...]
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